As the Colorado River winds through the Colorado Plateau’s soft sedimentary strata, it picks up a tremendous amount of sediment. This sediment — which once left the river’s waters so muddy that Spanish explorers christened it El Rio Colorado “the reddish river” — is a vital component to the unique ecosystems of the river. However, with the construction of the Hoover and Glen Canyon dams, which trap the sediment, the once-turbid waters have become a dazzling blue-green, signaling major changes with serious implications for the health of the river’s native [Read More]

Alexandria, VA - The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) is proud to support National Groundwater Awareness Week, March 10-16, 2013. Groundwater is a crucial source of fresh water for society, both in terms of potable water, agricultural, and industrial needs. The United States alone uses 79.6 billion gallons of groundwater per day for public and private drinking water, irrigation, livestock, manufacturing, mining, thermoelectric power, and other purposes. While freshwater accounts for less than 3% of all water on Earth, groundwater makes up roughly 99% of that 3%. [Read More]

Alexandria, VA — Beginning today, the Federal Government’s discretionary spending accounts will be cut by $85 billion through the rest of the fiscal year. These across-the-board spending reductions, known as the sequester, were first proposed in 2011 as a penalty so severe they would force Congress to work together to solve the nation’s deficit woes. Unfortunately, no agreement on a package of replacement cuts or additional revenue in time to avoid the sequester has been made. [Read More]

Alexandria, VA - The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) and American Geophysical Union (AGU) have released a recording of the latest AGU/AGI Heads and Chairs webinar. This month’s session focuses on legal issues related to field trips and field courses. Although field work is acknowledged as an integral part in geoscience education and research, it exposes geoscience departments to legal and safety liabilities. The video provides preemptive tips to conduct a safe field trip or course by minimizing risk and liability through careful planning. [Read More]

On June 5, 2012, a massive dock made landfall on Oregon’s Agate Beach, just north of Newport. The dock carried with it a host of castaways, including as many as a hundred species of mollusks, anemones, sponges, oysters, crabs, barnacles, worms, sea stars, mussels and sea urchins. A placard on the side written in Japanese revealed that the dock had been unmoored from the Japanese coastal city of Misawa during the catastrophic tsunami on March 11, 2011, bringing with it an essentially intact subtidal community of Asian species to the Pacific Northwest. [Read More]

Kelly M. Deuerling, a Ph.D. candidate and NSF Graduate Research Fellow at the University of Florida, was selected as the first recipient of the new scholarship dedicated to increasing the number of women in geoscientific professions. Deuerling was selected for her outstanding contributions to her field, extracurricular activities, and strong participation in the geoscience community. Deuerling is a highly accomplished geoscientist with a wide range of field experiences, lab skills, grants, and awards to support her research, as well as a publication in review. [Read More]

Alexandria, VA - The American Geosciences Institute is pleased to announce the release of its award-winning Faces of Earth series on YouTube in full High Definition. “As part of our mission to promote awareness of the geosciences, AGI is moving aggressively into the areas where the general public is, especially students,” says AGI Executive Director, Dr. P. Patrick Leahy. “We hope this will also enable wider use of these assets in both university and K-12 classrooms around the world. [Read More]

Alexandria, VA — Nathan Shotwell, a teacher at Holman Middle School in Glen Allen, Virginia, has been named the 2013 recipient of the Edward C. Roy, Jr. Award for Excellence in K-8 Earth Science Teaching. Shotwell, who earned his Master’s degree in Education from Virginia Commonwealth University, has spent his career challenging middle- and junior-high school students with what he calls “authentic problems” and inquiry-based learning in the Earth sciences. [Read More]

Alexandria, VA — The latest edition of Geoscience Currents explores how female geoscience enrollments and degrees changed in the 2011-2012 academic year. New data collected shows that female geoscience enrollments and degrees in the U.S. dropped sharply at both the Bachelor’s and Master’s levels, but increased slightly at the Doctoral level. The percentage of women enrolled in undergraduate geoscience programs in 2011-2012 was at the lowest levels seen since the 1990s, and Master’s participation rates fell below 40% for the first time since 2001. [Read More]

Alexandria, VA - Scientists are revisiting the age-old question of how Earth’s moon formed with the development of two new models that work out the complicated physics of planetary collisions. The idea of a moon-forming collision is not new: The Giant Impact Theory put forth in the 1970s suggested that the moon resulted from a collision with a protoplanet approximately half the size of ancient Earth. But the physics underlying such a collision implied that the moon should be made up of debris mostly from the protoplanet. [Read More]